Rhode Island Red by Charlotte Carter Read Free Book Online

folded up the newspapers and put them out near the incinerator. I wasn’t going to France and I knew it. Not on this sixty grand, anyway.
    â€œWho’s there?” Inge called timidly from behind the paint-flecked door to her apartment.
    â€œIt’s Ann,” I responded.
    It was dark inside. She closed the door behind me and switched on a lamp.
    Inge stood there, blinking every now and again, waiting for me to speak.
    â€œI have something to give you,” I said finally.
    She cocked her head to the left, but remained silent. Bruno ambled over and took his place at her side.
    I reached into my overalls and came out with four of the rolls. “Here.”
    I pressed them into her hands, swatting away the dog’s curious nose.
    â€œWhat is it?”
    â€œIt’s money. From Sig. He told me it should go to you if anything ever happened to him. There’s …” I faltered there, postponing the absurd sentence I was about to pronounce. “There’s twenty thousand dollars there, Inge.”
    â€œTwenty thousand.” She repeated the words as if I were talking about a breakfast cereal.
    â€œThat’s right. It’s not a trick. It’s not a joke. Just take it and live your life.”
    Bruno growled from way down in his chest.
    â€œI told Sig I didn’t know if we’d make the rent next month,” she said distractedly. “But how did you—”
    I ran out of there.
    In what had to be the boldest act of my life, out of high compassion and no sense, I had just given away twenty thousand dollars that didn’t belong to me—just like that—without thinking.
    Which left forty.
    So, who was going to be Robin Hood’s next have-not?
    The old woman in Harlem who rescued the babies with AIDS was dead now, but her work continued. Someone else was operating the charity called Hale House. Perhaps I’d give them something.
    What about the United Negro College Fund? What about a yearly stipend for some deserving music student at one of the city colleges?
    And there was still that large breasted, half bald black girl from Queens who blew tenor on street corners—the one who was so fond of Provence and triple milled soaps. The one who needed to have her head examined at the earliest possible opportunity.
    No, none of these, deserving as they might be. It was time for me to come to my senses.
    The money—what was left of it—was going where it should have gone five minutes after I’d found it. God help me, I was going to have to turn it over to Leman Sweet.

CHAPTER 5
    Little rootie toot
    The kitchen in the house where I grew up is as pure with light as a day in St. Paul de Vence. And it is invariably spotless. There is an explanation for this: Mom can’t cook.
    My mother is a child of convenience foods. No homemade cornbread or peach cobbler ever drew breath in that kitchen. We were strictly Colonel Sanders and Mrs. Paul; spinach pie at the Greeks on Metropolitan Avenue, corned beef at the deli in Sunnyside; Sunday trips in to Manhattan for the biscuits at Sylvia’s in Harlem or, on a really special occasion, dinner in the theater district before some musical my father was taking us to.
    It had nothing to do with my mother’s lousy cooking, but Daddy left her about eight years ago. He is a department head at one of those high schools for gifted assholes, and he fell in love with a colleague—a young white teacher nearly half his age. The feeling, apparently, was mutual and so they were wed. Like something out of the Greeks, my mother has not spoken his name since. Mom is going on fifty-five. She is still pretty. I don’t look a thing like her.
    I placed a roll of bills in the pocket of her mauve shirtwaist with a simple “Happy birthday, Mom.”
    â€œNanette, what is this?”
    â€œIt’s for you, Mom. Your birthday present.”
    â€œNanette, you already gave me a birthday present—three months